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    Broad vs narrow

    The broad vs. narrow debate has really taken off in the wake of ScienceOnline 2011 and I'm grateful for it. It's provided a lot of food for thought. But I want to clarify something: why do I keep yammering on about writing for broad audiences? There's the fact that it fits with my own goals but that's really by the by. Here are the two main reasons:

    1) It's dying out. As newspapers go into decline, people have declining avenues to learn about science, written at the far "generalist" end of the specialism spectrum. If anything, the opposite is true for science writing targeted to specialist audiences - it's in a growth phase.

    2) What remains is of varying quality. We're all aware of the problems of mainstream science reporting. It's not all bad. I reckon most of it is probably quite good. But it could be a lot better. And scientist bloggers have the potential to make it a lot better (see Rosie Redfield). But that only matters in the grand scheme of things if the better commentary reaches out as broadly as the weaker stuff.

    So no, I'm not saying everyone should aim broadly and I'm not devaluing the contribution of science writing focused at narrow audiences. I keep on talking about this because I really think we NEED people with specialist knowledge to be targeting broad audiences. If everyone chooses the narrow route, then science communication (and indeed, science) is f**ked.

    • 21 January 2011
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    over 1 year ago Brian Romans responded:
    Brian Romans
    These are good points Ed. And, you're absolutely right, the more quality science writing out there the better off we all are.

    I'd guess I'd add two points as we go forward:

    (1) The appreciation of the target-audience spectrum (that's what I'm calling it until someone comes up w/ something better). That is, there isn't simply broad and narrow. We can add this example to the parade of continuums masquerading as dichotomies. This is one of those things that everyone agrees when discussing it, but we seem to slip back into dichotomy mode (myself included) very easily. It's important because it gives the blogger/writer more choices in the topics to write about and the "level" in which to present them.

    (2) Along those lines, the end-member narrowcasting is the scientific paper. As I was saying on Chris' post, stepping outside of the truly technical writing and blogging about science *is* broad ... relatively. In fact, I'd hope that writers like you could get useful explanation or even ideas from the content we might put somewhere along the continuum.

    I don't think we need to formalize this target-audience spectrum in any way but it's just something I'm going to try and keep in my head as I do this.

    Great discussions as always.

    over 1 year ago Allochthonous (Twitter) responded:
    Chris_r2_normal
    Good points, Ed. And I'd like to clarify that I brought this up originally not because I thought you (or anyone else) was explicitly devaluing people writing for smaller audiences. I think the thoughtful and constructive nature of the conversations springing up about this issue are quite telling in that respect.

    Following on from Brian's comment, it's very true that there is a difference between writing for a lay audience and writing for a large audience; one of the other things is that you can use blogs to push science to *small* audiences of layman. Yet another nuance to ponder...

    over 1 year ago StephenMcGann (Twitter) responded:
    Je2_8800_normal
    Ed,

    I agree with your point 1. In fact, I feel this increased specialism is a culture-wide problem for communication - at least in the UK. Declining press sales, increasing web use, and what you might call the "BBC4 effect" combine to make the transmission of information a much more channeled-off and specialised thing. This is as true for the arts as it is for science. What used to be regarded as broad-interest material gets targeted to tighter demographics or interest groups. The generalist documentary on BBC1 becomes a specialist niche player on BBC4. Newspapers release ever-more-specialised supplements to house technical articles that were once in the main paper. Web sub-cultures address deeper, narrower topics. The hard-core detail becomes freer in these places, but we lose the skill to transmit and digest the broad stuff for a wide audience. Broadband communication is a fine craft, and one that shouldn't get lost in the continuum.

    I also agree with the distinction between 'general' and 'lay'. But I'm not sure how many TV executives are aware of this ;-)

    over 1 year ago Yogi Terry McCaw (Facebook) responded:
    I Love Ed. Haha...now that I got that out of the way here's why: I think there's a lot of people like me out here in the public, who are not scientists, but have a healthy respect for science and appreciate the fact that it really does help humans in many, many ways. And we are HUNGRY for good stuff we can read, but can also understand without being particle physicists and master chemists ourselves.

    So far the science bloggers have proved themselves far superior to the mainstream press in communicating to people like me. But I'd like to to see the press try to keep up.

    I do notice that some MSM papers, notably the NYT and Time, seem to be paying (some) attention to the science bologosphere, and when they do it increases the quality of their articles. Particularly I have seen shifts in the NYT towards a more realistic reporting of climate change issues by referencing climate scientists (who they often find through their blogs), instead of just re-hashing whatever the Cato Institute hands them. Sadly, VOA lags seriously behind on this.

    The bloggers at sites like Climate Progress have helped a lot, and I want to point out that the scientists who take it upon themselves to de-bunk the denialists, the anti-vaxxers, the pseudo-healers and all the rest do a critically important job in helping to shape public science conversation towards more realistic perspectives.

    Of course, the bedrock of science is always well-done studies subject to relentless peer-review, and it always should be that way. Without that, nobody knows what the hell they are talking about. The foundation must always be carefully constructed experiements and theories, exacting peer-review, and publishing in specialized journals. This makes possible to have a more generalized discussion that still has real science as its basis.

    Ed was one of the first science bloggers I saw that was totally inside this concept, and I am glad to see there are more coming along. Yoiu guys have all seen me , i comment as yogi-one on SB. I'm telling you, there are many more people out there like me that want to see the level of public conversation on science raised up to where it should be, and what Ed is advocating is, I believe, the right path to explore.

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